{"id":270837,"date":"2023-07-08T05:16:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-08T05:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270837"},"modified":"2023-07-10T07:07:56","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T07:07:56","slug":"nato-plans-escalation-against-russia-at-vilnius-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270837","title":{"rendered":"NATO plans escalation against Russia at Vilnius summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andre Damon \u2013 World Socialist Website July 7, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Next week, on July 11-12, NATO will hold a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the military alliance is expected to announce plans to rapidly expand military spending, surge troops to Russia\u2019s borders, and dramatically increase its involvement in the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

At the last NATO summit in June 2022, the alliance pledged to \u201cdeliver the full range of forces\u201d needed \u201cfor high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under conditions in which the much vaunted counteroffensive by the Ukrainian military has turned into a protracted debacle<\/a>, NATO is under pressure to directly intervene in the conflict to ensure its goal of, in the words of a former NATO commander, \u201cbreaking the back\u201d of Russia.<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of this supercharged climate, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of mining the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) with the aim of blowing it up.<\/p>\n

In a video address published Tuesday, Zelensky said that \u201cevery day, we are adding content to the NATO summit that will take place in Vilnius next week,\u201d which will ensure \u201csecurity in Europe,\u201d before turning to the Zaporizhzhia plant.<\/p>\n

Zelensky claimed that \u201cRussian troops have placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.\u201d He accused Russia of aiming to \u201ccommit new evil\u201d at the plant, adding, \u201cIt is the responsibility of everyone in the world to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrary to Zelensky\u2019s statements, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement that no \u201cvisible indications of mines or explosives\u201d have been observed at the plant, which is under monitoring by the organization.<\/p>\n

The framing of Zelensky\u2019s comments make clear that they are an effort to use any potential incident or provocation at the plant as a pretext for more direct military involvement by NATO in the conflict.<\/p>\n

In an article published<\/a> last week in Politico<\/em>, Ivo Daalder, former US ambassador to NATO, called for the alliance to respond to any \u201cdeliberate nuclear incident\u201d with direct intervention into the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn case of any deliberate nuclear incident, the US and key NATO allies need to intervene directly and bring the war to a swift and complete end by helping Ukraine restore control over all its territory,\u201d Daalder wrote.<\/p>\n

In an article in February on the revelation by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States and Ukraine had direct involvement in the bombing of the German-Russian Nord Stream pipeline, the World Socialist Web Site <\/em>warned <\/a>that the United States could stage a provocation to justify its direct entry into the war:<\/p>\n

In 1898, the explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor, portrayed as an act of war, was used to launch the Spanish-American War and dispatch troops to Cuba and the Philippines. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that prompted direct US involvement in the Vietnam War was fabricated\u2026 There is the precedent of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which were used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and the whole \u2018war on terror.\u2019<\/p>\n

The WSWS added:<\/p>\n

The bigger the escalation, the bigger the lie… the White House has it entirely within its power to stage a provocation, aimed at galvanizing public support for the war, whether by provoking a Russian response or manufacturing an \u201cattack\u201d out of whole cloth.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether any such provocation will take place ahead of the summit. It is clear, however, that the summit will be used for a significant escalation of the US conflict with Russia.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the summit, a group of retired generals and foreign policy officials called on the United States to explicitly back the military reconquest of Crimea and do everything necessary to ensure this takes place.<\/p>\n

The letter\u2019s signatories included retired generals Philip Breedlove and Wesley Clark, both NATO\u2019s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, as well as Ben Hodges, former commanding general, US Army Europe, and Michael McFaul, former US Ambassador to Russia.<\/p>\n

The letter\u2019s signatories also include all of the lead witnesses in the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019, which the Democratic Party deliberately centered on claims that Trump was undermining the war preparations against Russia<\/a>. Among them are Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine; Amb. Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO; retired colonel Alexander Vindman; and William B. Taylor, former US ambassador to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Critically, the list also includes Douglas Lute, who in 2022 said the Taliban should be a model for the arming of Ukraine, declaring the US should be \u201csupplying the Ukrainians as Pakistan supplied the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter calls on NATO to pledge to \u201cwin\u201d the war against Russia and openly assert its effort to militarily reconquer Crimea.<\/p>\n

This means taking steps to ensure that Ukraine 1) wins this war and reestablishes full control over its internationally recognized 1991 borders; and 2) is fully anchored in the security and economic arrangements that from 1945 until 2014 made Europe a continent of peace, prosperity and cooperation. The transatlantic community can only be stable and secure if Ukraine is secure. Ukraine\u2019s entry into NATO, fulfilling the promise made at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, would achieve that.<\/p>\n

The letter further demands:<\/p>\n

In Vilnius, NATO heads of state and government should offer an unequivocal statement of alliance support for Ukraine and for Kyiv\u2019s aim of regaining sovereignty and territorial integrity within its 1991 borders. They should further underscore their readiness to supply Ukraine weapons \u2014 including longer-range missiles such as ATACMS, Western fighter planes and tanks \u2014 in sufficient quantities to prevail on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Beyond direct intervention in the conflict, NATO is poised to approve plans to massively expand NATO troops on Russia\u2019s borders. Describing these plans, Politico reported earlier this year that \u201cIn the coming months, the alliance will accelerate efforts to stockpile equipment along the alliance\u2019s eastern edge and designate tens of thousands of forces that can rush to allies\u2019 aid on short notice\u2026 The numbers will be large, with officials floating the idea of up to 300,000 NATO forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, NATO officials have said that the alliance will institute a \u201cfloor\u201d for military spending, with 2 percent of GDP being an absolute minimum for members of the alliance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Also see: Zelensky set to blow up Zaporozhye NPP ahead of NATO summit, says senior Russian lawmaker<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 11-12, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the military alliance is expected to announce plans to dramatically increase its involvement in the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":263429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270839,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270837\/revisions\/270839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/263429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}